


Spirits

by Holde_Maid



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27674449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Holde_Maid/pseuds/Holde_Maid
Summary: Spirit students undercover in a human school - a brief ficlet
Comments: 9
Kudos: 3





	Spirits

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this together with my daughter Lina in the course of three days. We hope you enjoy our collaboration! We are currently writing a second part, but it will be a while till it will be ready to get posted.
> 
> (The name Kikiyu is not a reference to the Kenyan people of that name, we invented it, thinking it sounded Japanese, and apologise if it has any offensive meaning)

One beautiful day in Japan, three spirits were getting ready for school. They had to be in their human form to attend school, of course, so they could wear their school uniforms (and to stay undetected).

There was Kikiyu, the cat spirit girl and her twin brothers, Souta and Yuuto, who were fox spirits. The boys were in the class below her, as they were a year younger. They were always up to something. Today, Souta turned back when they were just about to leave the house. He announced, "I dropped my pencil down the stairs!"

Impatiently, Kikiyu replied, "We are downstairs. How can you drop it down the stairs?"

Meanwhile, in another part of the small town they lived in, a human girl named Yuri was also getting ready for school. She and Kikiyu were classmates. Yuri, like everybody else in their school, had no idea her friends were spirits. Only a priestess in a temple nearby knew.

Yuri had long, red hair she wore open. Three of her classmates loved literature so much that they had founded a literature club, and she had joined it.

The club's president was Momoka, the vice president was called Sayori. And then there were Natsuki and Yuri; so far, there were only four members. They loved to read and write poetry, and each of them had different literature tastes. During recess Yuri was reading another horror novel - she loved those.

The spirits were bored, so they wondered what to do next. They had to be careful around humans. After all, they must not show their superhuman abilities, or people would know they were spirits. That often caused problems, so all spirits avoided it. Unfortunately, Yuuto had an idea that involved turning into an animal, which made them invisible - and they lost their clothes. Super inconvenient! But he felt pulling a good prank was worth the risk, so he hid behind his siblings and turned into a fox there, hidden from sight. For the moment, it worked.

His siblings saw him walk away as a fox, and wondered what was going on. Kikiyu turned around: Oh yes, there was a crumpled pile of clothes and his shoes on the ground! She sighed, rolled her eyes and tried to pick up the whole bundle discretely.

Yuri heard the sigh, glanced at her friend and saw what she was doing. She was puzzled and a bit suspicious. "What is she doing?" she asked herself.

She turned back to her book, but she could not forget about that moment. She would have liked to inquire, but because of the way Kikiyu had looked around before bending down, she expected no answer. Also she did not want to follow them when they started walking along the garden, because that would be too obvious.

She did her best to concentrate until she was sucked in by the story again. She forgot about everything around her as she read about a girl in a forest at night. The forest was haunted, and the girl in the book was afraid, because she saw ghosts coming closer. At that very moment, Yuri felt a touch on her shoulder. She turned her head, but there was nobody to be seen. So she exclaimed, "Wow!"

She ran after her friends, who were just walking away. "Kikiyu!" She held up her book while catching up with them. "That is the best book I've ever read. The writing is so good I even thought I felt something!"

Behind her, Yuuto was still sitting on the ground, staring after her. That was not the reaction he had expected! Also, how should he now get his clothing back?! He ran after his siblings and to his horror, he heard Yuri ask, "What are you carrying there?"

Thankfully, Kikiyu kept her head and answered, "Just some spare clothing for my brother. That idiot keeps spilling things."

Souta complained, "Hey!"

"I didn't mean you," Kikiyu clarified. "but I want you to take it to him in the bathroom - he's waiting there."

Souta glanced back at his brother, as he took the bundle from her. Then he inquired, "Which one?"

"Ground level," his sister replied.

The twins went off to take care of Yuuto's little problem.

Yuri suddenly asked, "Wait, is that ... a fox? Kikiyu, something like a fox is following your brother!" She was alarmed. "What if it's dangerous?"

Kikiyu froze for a second, then she tried to cover it up by looking around. "What fox? I don't see anything. Are you pulling my leg?"

"Oh, dear! It was kinda transparent. What if it is an evil spirit?"

Her friend shook her head. "Come on! You read too many horror novels! I'm sure you are imagining things." After all, Natsuki had said so before. She thought, "I hope she fell for that!"

A tall man came out of the school building to call the students in: "Okay everybody, recess is over!"

His name was Mr. Takahashi, he taught maths. He was probably the least liked teacher in this school. He was not just very strict, but sometimes also unfair. For example, once a student accused Sayori of having broken his pencil sharpener. Mr. Takahashi had sent Sayori to detention without even checking if the sharpener was actually broken. It wasn't, it merely wasn't closed properly. When the student discovered that and told the teacher about it, he just told him, "Shut up!"

He followed Kikiyu and Yuri up to their class on the first floor, because their first class after recess was maths. Kikiyu thought how lucky her bothers were that they had a different maths teacher.

The class was very quiet and concentrated. The students were working on a sheet with math problems they had been given.

The teacher suddenly left the class, telling everbody to be quiet and diligent. Yuri thought that was very odd and rather suspicious. Normally teachers do not leave their class alone, unless it's due to an emergency. But he had gotten no call, had not looked at his phone or anything like that. Kikiyu, too, whispered, "Well, that's strange."

One of the boys peeked out through the window in the door. "He's going downstairs. At least he's not going to the headmaster!" He looked relieved. "Wait, is it firedrill today?"

"No," Momoka corrected him. "The last firedrill was only last month. Don't get your hopes up!"

"So what's he up to?"

The girl behind Yuri went closer to the window and looked out. "I think he's going outside!? Weird." She returned to her seat.

Everyone looked, but most stayed in their seats. The students by the window saw Mr. Takahashi come into sight.

"Okay, guys," Momoka announced. "Get back to work! If he comes back and we are not finished with the equations, we all know what he will be like..."

Yuri had a bad feeling about this. She thought, "We really should find out what is going on. And the headmaster ought to know about this. This can't be right. But if we complain, Mr. Takahashi will know one of us told the headmaster about it. Then he'll be really mad and unfair to us." She sighed. "When I am done with this, I need to find out what's going on." With that thought, she went back to work.

When she was finally done with the math problems, she looked out through the window again. She couldn't see him, but there was a bush that was shaking violently, so she thought he was doing something behind it. Weirder and weirder!

She decided she could not keep sitting around and said out loud, "I'm going to the toilet." She winked.

Kikiyu jumped up. "I'm going, too!"

Of course the girls did not go to the toilet, but hurried downstairs. Before they left the building, they opened the door only a crack and peeked out. They saw no sign of Mr. Takahashi, but there was a cat spirit. To Kikiyu's surprise, her friend asked, "What's up with that cat? It's kinda transparent, like that fox earlier."

This time, Kikiyu did not manage to hide her surprise, she blurted out: "You can see that spirit?"

"Spirit?" Yuri closed the door very slowly.

"Yes, that is an evil spirit, Yuri. But how can you see it?"

"Well, how can you? And how do you know it's evil?"

Belatedly, Kikiyu realised she had almost betrayed she was a spirit herself! So she said, "Only very few people can see spirits. I know only one other person who can, a priestess."

"And how do you know it's evil?" Yuri wanted to know.

Should she tell her? She could have said it was just a hunch, but Yuri had so long been a trusted friend that she decided to risk it: "I'm a spirit, too. A cat spirit, but I'm not evil."

Yuri nodded. "I understand. But look, Mr. Takahashi disappears, and this evil spirit turns up. Wouldn't it make sense if that's him?"

A voice from a window to their right answered, "Yes, it would." It was the cat spirit. Mr. Takahashi. "And you two are either spirits or humans blessed with a rare gift. Otherwise you could not see me."

"Gift it is, then," Yuri quickly answered, making it sound as if she meant Kikiyu as well.

"Oh joy! Two gifted meddlers at once. Hurray! Just my luck," Mr. Takahashi complained.

Yuri wondered what he meant. Surely he had been planning to do something, and their turning up had interrupted his plans. So she said, "Excuse me, the headmaster wanted to see you. He sent a student to inquire if you can spare him a few minutes. We said you were at the toilet and we'd give you the message."

Mr. Takahashi nodded, but he glanced at them suspiciously. "I'll see him after class. Go back now."

They turned around and quickly went - not back to their classroom, but further up to the headmaster's secretary. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Sato, we saw Mr. Takahashi leave the school building - could you please send us a stand-in if he is sent out again?"

"He did WHAT?" The secretary rushed to the window. "There he is! He is just coming back in!"

Yuri feigned surprise: "Oh, I thought he was sent out for an errand or something! Please, don't tell him we mentioned it, he will be terribly mad at us!"

"Alright, alright, go back to your class now."

The girls ran as fast and as quietly as they could. They saw no sign of Mr. Takahashi and sank into their seats with great relief.

Momoka wasn't happy they were back so late. "Girls, what were you doing? I thought you went to the bathroom, but you weren't there!"

"We couldn't tell you," Kikiyu replied. "This way you couldn't get in trouble, even if we were caught."

Momoka looked pretty unhappy. "Caught? Doing what?"

At that moment, the door opened and Mr. Takahashi came in. Without a word he went straight to the blackboard and started giving them more maths problems to solve. That way he kept everybody busy for the rest of the lesson. He only spoke to give them a load of homework, then he left without a greeting.

As soon as he had left class, people started commenting how oddly he had behaved today.

"Okay. Caught doing what?" Momoka took up their earlier conversation.

Yuri sighed inwardly. She had hoped that Momoka might have forgotten about it. She replied, "We reported him for leaving."

Beside her, Yuri nodded.

"Are you crazy? You guys are toast, you know that, right?"

By the end of the day the news spread through the whole school: Mr. Takahashi had been fired. And Yuri and Kikiyu hoped that this was the last they heard and saw of him.


End file.
